


noir at high noon

by deepandlovelydark



Series: count to ten and run for cover [8]
Category: Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly (1966)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Angel's Leather Gloves, Assassins & Hitmen, Cooking, Ficlet, Mentors, Misogyny, Murder, Non-Chronological, Non-Graphic Violence, Polyamory, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 17:05:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18319592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: twelve snippets in a life(not the one you're expecting)(or that)(nor that one either)





	noir at high noon

**Author's Note:**

> ...with a little prompting from sybilius, the narrative of Susan, Angel's cook. 
> 
> she has a noir voice that Blondie would die to possess

_4_. I knew Angel Eyes was trouble. That’s why I went to find him.

You’d think it’d cost me something: money, self-respect, time at least. Enough to make my search sound difficult, when the truth is it took me two days and no effort at all to make the connection I needed. Why not?

By then, I’d already lost the only thing that ever made my life worth a damn.

 

 _1._ “Some day, I’ll steal a car so fast it’ll make you puke when I drive it.”

My brother, aged six and a half. Even back then Charlie was already a handful, running wild in the streets, snatching wallets and peeking up skirts. He never did get any better.

I loved him, but I knew better than to dote. If he’d died on his own terms, bit through by exotic fish and drowning in tidal surf, or crashing over a cliff with a harem of screaming blondes, I could have taken any kind of crazy exit. It was his life to lose.

But my husband cheated him of that bright and burning death, gave him a two-bit piece of nothing in a back alley; and I wasn’t going to stand for that.

 

 _5._ “You’re not one of the regular waitresses here,” Angel Eyes said to me, puffing smoke from his pipe like Alice’s caterpillar. “I’d know if you were. Which one did you bribe for that apron?”

“Cindy. She thanked me for it, she says she was glad for a day to look after her sick kid.”

“She should have told me. I’d have arranged help.” His dark eyes bored into mine, more remorselessly than any bullet; that would have brought relief and he wasn’t going to promise any. “If it’s a job, you take that up with Rose. I don’t do house calls.”

“I don’t want you to kill my husband.”

“No?”

“I want you to teach me how to do it.” I took the knife out of the pink ruffled pocket. Charlie’s knife, still encrusted with his own blood from when they’d given it to me. “So I can do it myself.”

“…open the blade, stab, keep stabbing until either you’re dead or he is. Easy enough if you don’t care about getting caught.”

“I want to know how to do it  _right._ ”

Ask Angel Eyes, why that impressed him.

I’m content enough that it did.

 

 _2._ “Listen,” my sister said. “You need to learn this, if you’re going to catch a husband some day.”

Charlie and me and Daphne. All caught in each other’s webs, all hating each other for the traps we lived by. “I won’t be like you. I’ll never be.”

“You think putting on airs will bring you anything but misery? Shut up and listen.”

Every afternoon for years, she drilled me until I could have run that bakery better than she did herself. How you bake pies, doughnuts, cakes, every kind of fat that ever broke a man’s heart. Don’t ever overcook a flan. Use a light hand with the salt, a little goes a long way.

She’d fought her way to a kind of stalemate with life after mother dropped off the map, flirted hard and married young. Looks like mine, smarts like mine, and she’d settled for a man who wanted nothing more than his slippers and a newspaper.

If my husband had nothing else to recommend him, at least he had a hell of a lot more nerve.

 

 _5._ “Hmm. So you did show up.”

The second time we met at that diner, not the first; Angel Eyes told me to go home and think hard before I saw him again. I believe he knew already that I’d never second-guess myself; but the man takes pride in his small courtesies. Frees him up for the grosser breaches, I suppose, he’s far from the only one who believes in that. My husband for instance.

“As you can see.” Not  _thank you,_ not  _I’m so grateful_. Not until he gave me something worth a pleasantry.

“End of shift, I imagine you’re hungry. I ordered enough for two,” Angel Eyes said. Pushed over a bowl heaped with piping hot chili, my favourite. He hadn’t wasted any time checking up on me, to be sure. “We can eat and talk business.”

“Fine.” I crumbled in dry crackers, picked up my spoon.

“Stop.”

Anyone else, they’d have grabbed my hand, seized my wrist, restrained me. All he did was steal my spoon.

Dipped it in the chili. Out came the expected redness, tomatoes and beans, violated by a blue speck that had no business being in there at all.

“This is what you’re going to have to think about constantly, if you take this on. No movement anyone makes towards you will be safe. Ever again.”

“Trust me, that’s my life already.” Not in the shape of pills, but expecting an undercover cop behind every stranger’s face, listening to sirens and thinking they were coming for me. My bargain with the devil hadn’t brought me enough pleasure for the pain. I wanted some of my own back.  

He put the capsule on his own plate, burst it open with the tip of his knife. Took a bite of mushroom and steak and blue liquid, while I watched.

“Nothing more than food colouring. That’s the second thing you’re to know, if I teach you; I’m never going to hurt you unless you expect it. You’ll learn to face unexpected violence on your own terms, then you’ll understand it.” He handed back the spoon.

It wasn’t what I was asking for. It was what I needed; and I had the sense to recognise that much.

“…so I’m to trust no one except possibly you?”

“Put in those terms, that’s the same contract I was given.”

“Agreed.” I took my long-awaited bite. “You know, though, I might have spat it out anyway. This chili’s not nearly as good as anything I could make.”

“Remind me to bore you with my soup recipes sometime,” Angel Eyes said, with all of an enthusiast’s sincerely idiotic pleasure.

Looking back, he was going off-script right from the start.

 

 _7._ “I suppose he’s training you up, the same way he did me,” I said to Manco. 

He had a hideous way of biting into oranges, tearing away the rind with his teeth. Not an appealing habit for a man who cared so much how he looked and sounded. I’d never seen such concern for appearance before, paired to indifference such as that.

“Maybe not so much,” Manco said, dropping peel into the trash. “I’ll tell you honestly, Susan, it’s- let’s say I stumbled into this ass over tea kettle. I’m not good enough for it. I’ll get myself killed if I push my luck any further.”

“Why tell me? Angel Eyes is the one who ought to know.”

“He’s got more going for him than any man I’ve ever met,” Manco said, shoving his face into the orange. Messy as hell. “I might be more afraid of disappointing him than dying, I don’t even know.”

Which is what I told Angel Eyes, when Manco up and fled on us the first time.

Seemed to help a little.

 

 _8._ “Why can’t you call him Angel Eyes like everybody else?”

“I do sometimes,” Tuco said, yanking his feet up on the kitchen stool. Pulled himself close, arms wrapped around his knees, that’s a dirty habit. Meant more cleanup for me afterwards. “Didn’t he say you were from Mexico City?”

“I was partly brought up there, yes.” There and a lot of other places, but Mexico had been better than some; scant dollars had stretched a little further that side of the border. “What’s that to do with it?”

“Then you should know about nicknames, it happens a lot. Something you do to people you-”

he stopped himself then, with a gulp. “Sorry. Sorry. I know you don’t like me.”

“You’re fickle. I thought you were partnered with Blondie, why didn’t you run off with him?”

“Maybe he thought I loved Angel too much to come along. I don’t know I like it either, Susan, I’m scared. I miss Blondie. It feels like everything’s spinning out of control.”

“…look, why are you even in my kitchen?”

“That was a nice chili you made for lunch, only it was way too hot for me to eat and I’m starving, can I please have something else?”

All in a rush, like his hunger was what mattered here; when the thing he’d just completely passed over, taking it for granted, was that he could talk about love for Angel Eyes like it was an assured and settled thing. For an assassin. For the worst man I’d ever met, in terms of pounds of flesh and lives taken.

I knew my reasons for being there. He didn’t seem to have a single one for staying in our house of death; and yet here he was anyway, sunshine and Spanish and all.

So I fixed him up with a plate of warmed-over lasagna and retired to ponder, what the hell kind of universe spawned innocents like that.

 

 _9._ “You’ll be back, Angel Eyes.”

“Not this time, I don’t think.” He ran the cleaner through his pipe, one last smoke before bed. One last smoke before he left, in short. “If nothing else, it’d be a shame to waste the effort. I haven’t prepared my death in so much detail to pop back to life any time soon.”

“But a priory? You’ll be pacing the walls inside of six weeks.”

“I’m doing that regardless, Susan.” Pipe clean, he put it back on the stand; frowned at it reluctantly. “Suppose I’d better leave that. Rose will know damned well I faked it, if my favourite pipe goes missing the same time I do.”

“I’ll keep it as a souvenir. If it’s safe enough, I’ll see about sending it to you later.”

“You’re very practical, Susan,” he said. Nearly grateful. “All these years, I’ve talked and you’ve listened. Listened better than I ever did.”

“I won’t ever make half the assassin you are.”

“Maybe you’ll be something better- I don’t know, Susan. Alma taught me how to live, but those two have given me something to live for. Sentimental bastards- for the life of me,” Angel Eyes said, picking up his hat. “I could not tell you whether I hope you’ll find the same one day, or that you’ll never get within fifty miles of this kind of hope.”

“I had that and decided it wasn’t worth it, remember? You’d better be sure about these two.”

“Enough to take the risk.”

“Good luck. But I’m not selling the house, all the same.”

 

 _6._  This is the last thing my husband said to me. “Honey, what’s for dessert?”

I let him have the first spoonful of berry crumble, piping hot and perfect. Then he died.

That’s all there is to say about that.

 

 _10._  The hacienda was very quiet after that.

I shut it up. Stayed in my own place, the small apartment I’d paid for with my first year’s wages. The kitchen wasn’t so much, and the oven unreliable, but it sufficed; I had more important notions in mind.

My husband taken care of, I turned my attention to the system that’d let him flourish. Rose had kept a tight grip on his empire for years, but with Baker in jail, with his best assassin off the radar, there were signs of slippage. 

He was on the lookout for traitors, of course, informers and whistleblowers. G-Men. Any kind of man who might want to seize what he had, and turn it to account for money or repute or a drive for justice.

What he wasn’t looking for was me.

Just wanting to burn it all down. 

 

 _11._ Next time I saw Angel Eyes, it was another restaurant. Wrong side of the border, the chili still wasn’t any good, and I didn’t bother to ask who was picking up the check.

One of the boyfriends was slumped against his shoulder, the other was swigging orange juice like vodka. Angel Eyes spread his hands wide.

“I think you should know. I was always far more of a disaster than I let on.”

“Uh huh,” I said, not batting an eye as I reloaded the gun. “It figures, you hopeful maniac. These two treated you all right?”

“No. Yes. It’s a bit past that point, Susan,” Angel Eyes said, his face lined with exhaustion and pleasure. “I’m in love. The rest doesn’t matter.”

Like I said, he went off-script. Anything might have happened to the trio after that night.

(Even if I did know, I’m not telling you.)

 

 _3._  “You’re pretty.”

“Sure.”

“You cook well?”

“Sure.”

“Ever dream of being a mobster’s moll?”

That’s all my husband had to say, to net me. I’m not sorry.

 

 _12._ I still don’t have anything that makes my life worth a damn. Not like Angel.

That’s okay, though.

Before I’m done with Rose, a whole lot of other people are gonna feel just like me…


End file.
